A Chicago Bridge Gets A Complicated Overhaul

Wed, March 6, 2013 9:00am

Construction on Chicago's Wells Street Bridge is taking place around the clock, as crews replace the south leaf section. The north leaf section will be replaced in the spring. The double-decked steel truss drawbridge was built in 1922.

Construction on Chicago's Wells Street Bridge is taking place around the clock, as crews replace the south leaf section. The north leaf section will be replaced in the spring. The double-decked steel truss drawbridge was built in 1922.

Construction on Chicago's Wells Street Bridge is taking place around the clock, as crews replace the south leaf section. The north leaf section will be replaced in the spring. The double-decked steel truss drawbridge was built in 1922.

A major artery that feeds Chicago's downtown business district has been temporarily cut off as crews work around the clock this week to replace half of the 91-year-old Wells Street drawbridge.

The bridge carries not just cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians but elevated trains, too, making the project so complicated that one Chicago transportation official compares it to open heart surgery.

'Complicated From Every Point Of View'

As an engineer, Johnny Morcos loves a challenge and as a bridge project manager for the Chicago Department of Transportation, does he ever have one. He's overseeing the Wells Street Bridge replacement. The steel truss drawbridge over the Chicago River is used by nearly 100,000 people a day.

"It's complicated from every point of view you could possibly have," Morcos says. "From an engineering point of view, from an urban dwelling point of view — you're in the heart of the central business district, you're cutting off CTA transit users, which there are roughly 70,000 users — and you're working over a river."

And Mayor Rahm Emanuel has issued marching orders to finish the project in just nine days.

"And top of that now, it's snowing in Chicago. We're in the middle of a winter storm," Morcos says.

Despite nearly 10 inches of snow, the work continues. It all started over the weekend. After the El tracks were shut down, crews lifted the north half of the drawbridge straight up into the air. A barge moved into place underneath the south half, and then steelworkers suspended on lifts from the barge lit their torches and started cutting away.

"The new section was floated in, supported on shoring towers on a barge," Morcos says.

And Morcos says it's now hanging in place while crews fasten bolts to gusset plates to secure it. Think of it like changing a car tire, he says.

"What you do is you jack it up, take off the old tire — but like every owners manual says, you don't tighten that first bolt right away," Morcos says. "You just hand-tighten it and then do the other four remaining bolts."

On this bridge though there are 4,000 bolts that need to be connected and secured, so crews will be working around the clock to be ready for trains to ramble over the bridge by the next Monday morning. And despite the cold and snow, passersby can't help but stop and watch.

"I think it's pretty awesome!" says David Hazan, who lives in a high rise just across the river. He's been photographing every single stage of the project. "I was actually showing pictures of this. We were at dinner with friends last weekend, and I was just like, 'Hey, any of you that were boys and had connect sets as kids — tell me how cool this is!'"

It's so cool that there will be a repeat performance in late April and early May, when the north half of the Wells Street Bridge will be replaced to complete the project.